Kainos Evolve Provides Central Electronic Patient Record Repository at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

London, UK April 15^th, 2013 Thriving technology company Kainos has announced that Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust will be the latest Trust to go live with its flagship Evolve electronic medical record (EMR) system in the coming weeks.

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in London treats more than 360,000 patients a year and employs over 3,000 staff. It will go live with the award-winning Kainos technology in May 2013; exactly 20 years after its purpose-built premises were opened in May 1993. The project is part of a drive to eliminate paper-based records and increase the efficiency and quality of patient care.

Chelsea and Westminster embarked on its records digitisation programme as early as 1999, when it introduced LastWord, a comprehensive Electronic Patient Records (EPR) system. The aim with the broader Kainos electronic document and records management (EDRM) capabilities - which in Evolve have been optimised for UK healthcare organisations - is to combine this content with historical and current medical notes in a single repository. Kainos is providing the Trust managed scanning services via a specialist bureau partner, to capture historical medical records relating to live patient cases.

Kainos was chosen for the project based on its track record of deploying EPR and EMR solutions across a range of UK Trusts. Karen Baker, EDM Programme Manager at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, explains

'Kainos met our extensive range of selection criteria and came out best on product, price and quality as well as previous experience,' she says.

The deployment at Chelsea and Westminster will be rolled out initially across four 'Early Adopter' specialty services urology, general surgery, dermatology and plastics in May and June. 'This offers us a good test bed, covering most touch-points on patient pathways,' Karen notes. 'There is a lot of very strong clinical engagement across these disciplines and enough throughput to give a realistic representation of how the system will work at the Trust. We'll then take away any lessons learnt which will enable an accelerated rollout across the hospital in the next phases.'

Of the expected benefits she says, 'Reducing the use of paper records will reduce the clinical risk of medical records not being readily available at the point of need. Evolve will also support multi-user access, and enable tighter governance.'

Specifically the Trust expects staff will spend less time looking for missing records and waiting to receive patient files. This will enable it to meet operational targets and improve patient care, while reducing duplication of effort.

'With the initial rollout we will be 'paperlight', but our aspiration is to be paperless,' Karen concludes. Further ambitions include secure mobile access to full patient records, and selective content-sharing with partner healthcare providers across the community.

Commenting on the project, Deirdre O'Neill, Head of Evolve at Kainos, said, 'We are thrilled to be working with such a prestigious and high-profile organisation as the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, whose aims to innovate and transform the management of patient care are closely aligned with our own ambitions for the sector. This is yet another NHS Trust triumph for Evolve, further confirming its relevance to UK healthcare priorities in the current climate.'